"On the 8th of February the second contemporary art fair Re:Rotterdam will commence. This event will be held simultaneously to Art Rotterdam, just around the corner at the Boompjes 60-68 in Rotterdam, NL."

Joost Krijnen and myself are showing our work on the 4th floor.

This work is for sale at € 150,-. The proceeds will benefit the Vincent van Gogh House Foundation. For more info and contact: info@michielvanderzanden.nl or vincent@vangoghhuis.com.

Van Gogh's birthplace

Riding my bike on a spring morning, I noticed this beautiful Neoclassical front of the Town Hall of Zundert. I immediately thought of an old postcard. Zundert is a small town near Breda and known for being Vincent van Gogh's place of birth.

The Town Hall was built between 1830 and 1840 and designed by the architect Pieter Huyser from Breda. It's located directly opposite Vincent van Gogh's birthplace. From his bedroom window, the young Vincent looked directly at the facade.

Building Blocks

When I was asked by the Van Gogh House (www.vangoghhuis.com) to make a multiple artwork, I decided to make an interpretation of this Town Hall by using toy (building) blocks. Blocks which Van Gogh may have played with in his youth: the type of classic toy which by definition has nostalgia in it: Research showed different variations and origins. One pioneer was educationalist Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) and his construction sets ('baukasten') by which children could train their spatial aptitude. Later in the 19th century, with these first constructiuon sets as an example, Richter's Anker Steinbaukasten were produced.

3D

This print 'Town Hall' shows the building stone facade as a construction plan. The image is a 3D Computer Generated Image therefor I used Blender, by which highly realistic lighting and material expression can be achieved.
Later on, the model will also be made out of hard plastic.

Some very nice footage I found online, showing vintage animated computer graphics. More on VintageCG's YouTube channel.

Past 16th July, Kunsthalle New in Chicago presented the -one night only- exhibition 'A Small Forest', a presentation curated by Bea Fremderman and Nicholas O' Brien. It included the work of artists Michael Manning, Camilla Padgitt-Coles, Kate Steciw, and myself. The exhibition focused on "delicate landscapes developed and appropriated by artists that have been found and manipulated within the space of the screen..."

"The exhibition's premise is wonderfully illustrated by Michiel van der Zanden’s Painting LargeFlatMap100. This brings up issues of relationality, being, and, of course, aesthetics. At once a joke, a provocation and a mediation, van der Zanden’s piece explores spatiality and visual relations within a virtual world. Make sure to watch until the end and you’ll be rewarded with cacophony." Joel Kuennen - ArtSlant

For more information and images, check www.kunsthallenew.com (Exhibitions -> Past-> A Small Forest)

Waiting for the drawbridge of the Erasmusbrug in Rotterdam, this situation made me think of computergame glitches... Bringing me back to the work of Robert Overweg.

More on glitches in this post.

Art Amsterdam was one great experience! Thanks to all my friends who helped out, everybody at HEDEN and those who dropped by!

View/read MORE

Proudly to announce my solo presentation at Art Amsterdam 2011! You can find my work at HEDEN, stand 058.

It will be a painting exhibition presented inside an installation, the rest is still a surprise. Hope to see you there!

Art Amsterdam
11 - 15 May 2011

More info on www.artamsterdam.nl and www.heden.nl



The official Art Amsterdam poster showing a young artist in his studio (by Jasper de Beijer)

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17 September - 6 November 2011: Game-City, 's-Hertogenbosch, NL

Game-City is all about the interface between visual arts and computer games. The event is a co-production between bART, mobile platform for contemporary art and the Centre for Visual Arts (CBK) , 's-Hertogenbosch.

Game-City shows work of 10 different artists and game designers. In addition there are weekly activities that take place at various locations in the city.

More info on this in the near future!

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Beautiful designed and well-playable Flash site by graphic designers Aleksandra and Daniel Mizielińscy. Here you can play 80's LCD games, on-screen, no download needed.

www.pica-pic.com

Look at my earlier post about LCD games too...
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Previous post reminded me of this episode by online cult figure ANGRY VIDEO GAME NERD. This one's about game glitches (errors); a classic in my opinion.

Also check this post.
Angry Video Game Nerd's homepage

New stop-motion video by Rymdreglage: Rymdreglage - Raise your little hand. Kind of a sequel to 8-bit trip.

A lot of the retro/8bit/Lego/pixelation/nostalgia is played out. But it won't get any better than this!

Note the bugged text and low res graphics in some parts.

(c) www.rymdreglage.se

Saw this at the local V&D store. Cool, but ugly at the same time :)
Also see this post.

WWW.GAMESCENES.ORG is a blog about art in the age of videogames. This is an interview I had by E-mail earlier this year, with Mathias Jansson, one of the contributors of www.gamescenes.org.

->LINK!

WW.TENWORDSANDONESHOT.COM is an artblog owned by Kevin Krumnikl, designer and art collector / enthusiast. On this blog, artists are invited to send in one photo of their studio and give a response to 10 given words. There's an update every 2-3 days. After each 100 artists, there will be a publication in book form.
Today, www.tenwordsandoneshot.com posted a shot of my studio and my response to the ten words: www.tenwordsandoneshot.com/michiel-van-der-zanden/

Here's an interview with the man behind tenwordsandoneshot.com.